“We want to educate people about cultivation since it’s the backbone of the industry and it’s so difficult to do it yourself,” says Jeremy Bufford, the school’s founder. “The response has been overwhelming. The subject has been taboo for so long and we’re trying to fix that.”

“We first started teaching people about the history and policy of marijuana, but we’ve evolved to the point where we teach people how to be an entrepreneur, how to work in a dispensary or even run their own,” says Dale Sky Jones, the school’s executive chancellor. “We want to teach people about how to have successful law enforcement encounters and how to grow responsibly.”

Oaksterdam and colleges like it focus on college students and recent graduates.

“At first, it was really only the 18 to 30 crowd because they were the only ones with the ‘cojones’ to show up,” Jones says. “But gradually, we’ve gotten older students from further away. Yet there’s still been a big influx of younger students as more states have started to legalize it.”

Mason Tvert of the Marijuana Policy Project highlights not the drug, but the potential for job creation in this booming industry.

“The job pool is limited out there, but the marijuana industry is growing,” says Tvert, the director of communications for the advocacy group. “Just like we need talented young graduates for the renewable energy industry, we also need experts to emerge for this.”

Still, some students are hesitant to commit to the industry despite the recent movements towards legalization in states such as Colorado and Washington.

“I personally can’t see myself getting involved with it as this point,” says Tom Hoff, a junior international business and marketing major at Georgetown University and a media relations intern with the Students for Sensible Drug Policy.

“History shows that the business model of big drug industries such as tobacco and alcohol is to target children and young people since they make lifetime addicts and customers,” said Esfahani via e-mail. “The big marijuana industry is doing the same by creating such colleges.”

Experts also warn that cannabis colleges might not be the best pathway into the industry.

“The cannabis colleges are trying to be that initial rush, but if this does ever become fully legal, the people that are going to be working (in the industry) are going to be graduates of places like MIT and Virginia Tech,” says James Hawdon, a professor of sociology at Virginia Tech. “But at least in the beginning stage, there are going to be some advantages in having that specific knowledge about it.”

Students still have to be aware of the risks associated with the business in the short term, says Oaksterdam’s Jones.

“This is all still federally illegal, so you can lose more than just money if you do it the wrong way,” Jones says. “It’s a school’s obligation to help students understand the risks.”

Alex Koma is a senior at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.